Studies look at the effect of each new person on the planet. (Shutterstock)

(Newser)
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You’ve got your hybrid, your low-watt bulbs, and your solar panels: what’s the next step to saving the planet? Try a pack of condoms. New studies point to the hefty environmental toll of each child, particularly in America, the Washington Post reports. Every kid born in the US means another 1,644 tons of carbon dioxide, says an Oregon State study: that’s 91 times more than a Bangladeshi baby. (Americans live longer in a car-loving nation.)

There’s an “irrational taboo on the subject” of population control, says the chief of a British activist group that sponsored a similar study by the London School of Economics. "But “there is no possibility of drastically reducing total carbon emissions while at the same time paying no attention whatever to the drastic increase in the number of carbon emitters.” The group wants birth control to be a more widely considered solution to climate change.